Alison Klayman's documentary "Ai WeiWei: Never Sorry," has just been released. (Tish Wells/MCT)

Alison Klayman's documentary "Ai WeiWei: Never Sorry," has just been released. (Tish Wells/MCT)

Photo: Tish Wells

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Dissident artist Ai Weiwei﻿

Dissident artist Ai Weiwei﻿

Photo: Ng Han Guan

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Chinese artist Ai Weiwei walks outside his home after seeing off his wife and his lawyers who were leaving for court, in Beijing on July 20, 2012. Chinese artist Ai Weiwei is unlikely to win a multi-million-dollar tax case that was filed against a company he founded when a court announces a verdict, the activist's lawyer said. AFP PHOTO / Ed JonesEd Jones/AFP/GettyImages less

Chinese artist Ai Weiwei walks outside his home after seeing off his wife and his lawyers who were leaving for court, in Beijing on July 20, 2012. Chinese artist Ai Weiwei is unlikely to win a ... more

Photo: ED JONES

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Samantha Gaines, 3, enjoys the spring temperatures in Hermann Park while playing amongst the sculptures, titled Circle of Animals / Zodiac Heads, at Hermann Park Monday, April 9, 2012, in Houston. The series of bronze heads is first major public sculpture by internationally renowned Chinese contemporary artist Ai Weiwei. It will be on view through June 3 near the southeast corner of McGovern Lake. ( Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle ) less

Samantha Gaines, 3, enjoys the spring temperatures in Hermann Park while playing amongst the sculptures, titled Circle of Animals / Zodiac Heads, at Hermann Park Monday, April 9, 2012, in Houston. The series of ... more

Photo: Brett Coomer

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Just after the construction ropes went down earlier this year, Ai's "Circle of Animals / Zodiac Heads" drew attention at Hermann Park.

Just after the construction ropes went down earlier this year, Ai's "Circle of Animals / Zodiac Heads" drew attention at Hermann Park.

Photo: Molly Glentzer

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Director recalls filming of Ai Weiwei documentary

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In 2010, a San Francisco gallery showed the work of Ai Weiwei - one of the world's most ingenious living artists - but few took notice.

About six months thereafter, Ai's activist blogging got him arrested by Chinese authorities and detained incommunicado for 81 days. Suddenly the whole world took notice.

Filmmaker Alison Klayman, 27, was already editing her documentary, "Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry" when Ai's arrest and its aftermath forced her to resume filming.

Klayman recently spoke about the movie, which is now playing at Sundance Houston.

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A: I didn't set out to make anything but a character study. This film is a product of my own investigation of what's Weiwei like, what's he about, what's going to happen to him? But I definitely think his life became more political over the few years that we filmed together.

Q: Do you think your work on this project contributed to his jeopardy in China?

A: I was an accredited journalist, so I had interaction with the foreign ministry at least once a year, when my visa was renewed, and they never asked me about Ai Weiwei. In terms of my presence around Weiwei, I'm not sure anyone could tell what I was doing.

Q: What was the media affiliation that got you your journalist's visa?

A: Global Radio News, based in London. It's really a network of freelancers, but they have a bureau in Beijing, and in 2008 I became their correspondent there.

Q: Do you speak Mandarin?

A: I do. I worked very hard in the first two years, even before I met Weiwei, learning Mandarin and trying to improve it, sometimes with tutors. Also, I tried to get jobs with lots of co-workers who didn't speak English.

Q: Apart from studying Mandarin, what was your most important preparation for this project?

A: This is my first film and certainly my first feature. I met Weiwei because I was shooting a video of an exhibition of his. I knew the gallery - the Three Shadows Contemporary Art Center in Beijing - and they said they needed a 20-minute video about his New York photographs because the show itself wasn't going to fully explain the history behind it. Our relationship has always been, from Day 1, that I'm filming him. But I also tried to freelance as many TV pieces as possible.

Q: Having interviewed Weiwei twice, I am struck that every statement, every gesture he makes seems completely true to who he is. I think the film captures this, but is it your impression of him also?

A: Definitely, but in a way that I felt I needed that proven to me. I really wanted to see someone who is also such a master of the media, and who plays with fake and real in his art. To me, that was one of the big questions starting out - fake and real, who is this guy who crosses into so many different arenas in terms of different cultures and nationalities, all with such fluidity?

Q: Do you think the film has altered his fate in any way?

A: We don't know what's going to happen to him. We're hoping he'll have his restrictions lifted and be able to travel and appear with the film. To have a Q-and-A with him onstage after a screening is a dream of mine.

With his release last year, I became convinced that his having that high profile, and the film's raising awareness of him - I don't know whether that was a reason he was released, but it certainly didn't hurt.

Q: Did you have an end point in mind before events took over and, as it seems, dictated the last portion of the film?

A: There started to be so many dramatic events happening - his having the biggest shows of his life, the biggest commissions of his career and his activism and the government response, I started to feel … that I should make the Tate Modern installation feel like an ending.

I went to London hoping I would get some final shots, but that didn't last very long because of the government's demolition of his Shanghai studio. Even though we'd started post-production in New York, I found myself back in China again just a few weeks after shooting in London. I felt like the demolition was itself a story line. Demolition and property rights are big issues in China; they affect rich and poor. Then, with Weiwei's detention, it was clear the story had to continue, and it was very hard to work on the film in that period.

But with his release, it really solidified the point that the years covered by the film were a critical period in his life when things really did ramp up, and the detention and release actually punctuate this period in time.